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chapter 6
Ally – Four months later
Scottie sighed impatiently. “Ally, it’s your birthday. Take the damn day off.”
“Nah, I don’t need to.” I shrugged. “I’ll be bored if I do and there’s work to do, so I might as well get it done.” I didn’t want anyone to make a big deal of it; it was just like any other day. Scottie always worked on his birthday. There was no reason why I shouldn’t do the same.
“Scottie, me, ’n Sam noticed that there looked to be a few weeds out near the billabong the last time we were there. While we’ve got time, I thought we could go out there and assess it.”
It was news to me. I hadn’t seen any. “What weeds?” I asked them both, my gaze swinging between Craig and Sam.
“Oh, yeah.” Sam nodded, the look on his face serious. “Lantana weed.”
“What the hell?” I asked, shocked to my core. “We don’t have lantana out here. It doesn’t even grow this far west. And why didn’t you say anything when you saw it?”
“You blokes sure?” Scottie asked, his brow furrowed, disbelief in his tone. We’d had minor flooding down near the gully and rockpool a year or so earlier, but we’d never had too much of an issue with anything germinating from the waters. Most of the seeds and uprooted plants were light enough that they flowed with the floodwaters, and last summer had been a hot one. Anything like lantana, which usually grew in coastal areas where the climate was more temperate, didn’t survive much past germination.
“Pretty certain that’s what it was, but we’d better make sure, ay? I’d hate to not look for it, then find that it’s spread.” Sam was right. As unlikely as it was that we had lantana on the station, we needed to be sure. It was poisonous to cattle and although we had the gully and billabong fenced off from them, there was no telling where else it could be growing.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Concern etched Scottie’s brow. He scrubbed his hands over his face and rubbed his eyes. Dark circles under them spoke of just how tired he was. The tense set of his jaw and the edges of his mouth turned down in a frown had misery radiating off him. But whenever I asked him if he was happy, he’d brush me off with a non-answer. His standard reply was “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.” Whenever I asked if he wanted to join me for a night in Longreach—he needed to find a pretty lady and get laid—he’d always turn me down. I had no idea why he was determined to isolate himself out here. “We’ll need to work out how to get rid of it. Ally, do you think you can make sure you know what it looks like and how we can clear it?”
“Yeah, no worries. I’ll hop online and grab some pictures, then I’ll go with the boys and take a good look around. We’ll get a better idea once we’ve seen what’s out there.” How could I have missed it? Lantana was pretty easily spotted, especially out here. It would stand out like a sore thumb. But it wasn’t impossible.
The trip to the billabong was about ninety minutes in the four by four. We’d be gone half the day. Not a bad way to spend my birthday, I supposed, especially if we could come away with a plan to get rid of a weed that had no business growing out here in the desert.
We tucked into brekkie and before I knew it, Sam and Craig were hustling out after Scottie and I were left to download some photos.
“Leave lunch with us, hon. We’ll whip something up for you and the lads and pop it in an esky for you.”
“Thanks, Nan.” I hesitated, then sighed. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
“I doubt that it’ll be lantana,” Ma responded, her face serious. “And if it is, don’t beat yourself up about it. You can’t be expected to spot everything. Both you and your brother are perfectionists, but you can’t control everything.”
“But it’s my responsibility.”
Ma placed her hands on my shoulders and squeezed gently. “This is a big station. You can’t be expected to know of every plant that’s growing on it. Go and enjoy yourself. Think of it as a day with two good-looking blokes, a picnic, and a walk. Enjoy their company and relax.” She smiled and added, “They’re trying not to show it, but they do like you.”
“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes at her. If those boys were interested in me, they sure as hell didn’t show it. A little flirting and playful banter in the early days was as far as it’d gone. Then it was as if a switch had flipped and both backed off. I’d been officially friend-zoned.
At six in the morning, it was already warming up. The day would be stinking hot, and the storms that had been brewing over the last few days made it muggy as hell. I was hanging out for summer’s first storm, but we were still a few days away yet. By the time we walked around the billabong, I doubted we’d be wanting anything more than have the wind on our faces as we drove back. The food would probably get eaten in the fourbie rather than in the midday heat.
“We right?” Sam ducked his head into the kitchen.
“No, still got to download a few photos. Give me five. Grab the esky from Nan when she’s done with it.” I jogged up the stairs.
I worked fast, downloading a few images of lantana leaves, flowers, and the whole of the plant. I had no idea what variety it would be, and there were a few, so I needed to cover my bases. I packed my camera, sunscreen, and another shirt so I didn’t end up with a rash from the leaves before I dashed down again and waved bye to Ma and Nan, who were tidying up the kitchen. Sam and Craig were already waiting by the four-wheel drive for me, and I tossed my bag in the boot, and held out my hand for the keys. Craig dropped them onto my palm and slid into the back.
The drive was bumpy and in places, slow-going. Some of the tracks had been damaged by cattle hooves sinking into soft ground when it’d rained and weren’t much more than rutted areas of red dirt. As the sun rose in the sky and the heat intensified, I wiped the bead of sweat from my brow and navigated around trees that were older than the station. Some were around well before Captain Cook even sailed into Botany Bay.
I watched as the blue of the sky deepened, the red dirt seeing another summer’s day. How many had passed before me? Too many to count. This land was ancient; its history intertwined with its present. The spirits whispered a soft breeze through the rustling leaves and the animals that embodied them. White man had come here and destroyed so much of this precious country. Climate change and natural disasters were changing the environment. Mining and development had obliterated so many sacred sites and cultural history going back sixty thousand years. It was up to us to protect it. We were graziers. Cattle station owners. But we were really caretakers, looking after the land for our lifetime so we could pass it onto our children to do the same for the next generation.
We were all quiet on the way there. My head turned over and over, the guilt of having missed the noxious weed on my visit to the gully only a few weeks earlier never leaving me. It weighed on me that I’d failed in my responsibility to protect the biodiversity of the desert from something as aggressive and invasive as a weed that could not only kill our cattle, but native animals too. I rubbed my forehead and let out a groan of frustration before thumping the heel of my hand against the steering wheel as the gully came up ahead. Only a few hundred metres in front of us lay the offshoot of an old riverbed. Wide and shallow at its entry, the ravine narrowed and deepened as it neared the billabong, with it ending in a lake surrounded by a rocky ledge on one side and trees overhanging the water with a muddy bank on the other. It was our oasis in the desert. A secret place we’d come to as kids. It was where Dad had taught us to swim and Ma had laughed along with us as he’d tossed us in the air. This place held happy memories for us.
I pulled up the Landcruiser and swung open the door, but before I could get out, Sam grasped my hand and Craig rested his hand on my shoulder. “Ally,” Sam started.
“There’s no weed.” Craig’s voice from behind gave me pause. I was unsure whether to knock them for six or leave their arses out here and turn around and go back to the homestead. “We wanted you to have the day off,” Craig continued, the truth spilling from his lips lightning fast. It was as if he needed to get the words out before I flattened him. It was a fair call on his part. “We spoke to Scottie before brekkie. Told him we wanted to do something special for you. That’s why he was trying to get you to have the day off.”
“When you wouldn’t agree, this bloody fruit loop came up with the brilliant idea that we could trick you into coming out.” Sam hitched his thumb over his shoulder.
